These posts were about my experience as a volunteer in the Peace Corps, but now as a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV).

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Friday, October 14, 2011

Moving One Day at a Time

These past three weeks have gone by pretty fast even
though I haven’t done much except try to rewrite the schedule to no avail.My second week here, there was a terrible rain
storm that flooded the streets and closed the schools for four days and during
that week I rewrote the school schedule, which would be different than their
current schedule because it would allow students to get out early around 4 pm
instead of 4:30 pm or 4:40 pm.What I
did was take out their breaks.They have
two 15 minute breaks (one in the morning and another in the afternoon).However, this idea is almost shot down by the
feedback I got from the teacher survey I passed around last week (my third
week).

The reason for no breaks was to reduce noise from the
breaks and have students more in class.When I was in school between ages 12-16, I never had recess.However, I did have an hour of Physical
Education and that’s what this group needs.But how do you provide regular physical education when you don’t have
adequate space and you have to share the basketball court with the community
and another school next door. For example, the girls only had 20 minutes to practice for their basketball games on Friday, (which they placed third) before they had to give up the court to the community who were just using it for money games (gambling during school hours.)

Teacher’s day and the start of practice for our sports
festival took over the third week and the sports festival took over this week
as well as I only taught one lesson, but it was very successful and the
students enjoyed it.The lesson was
called Human Scrabble where students got into two groups where each student had
a letter of the alphabet.The idea is
for the students to come up with multiple words with the letters they
have.One team came up with eleven and
the other team had seven.The best way
is for the students to get on the floor and to make words that way or use the
chalkboard.However, I’ve seen better
success on the floor.

Back to the third week, I observed the first day and then
the next two days were taken over by Teachers day.Teachers’ day is big here.Each female teacher received multiple flowers/roses
from students and everyone got out a half day early.The next day was the same thing all over
again, but without the students and in an arena where the teachers were the
entertainers singing and dancing all day.The day after that was back to school, but only half the students were
in class; the other half were outside practicing (ahmm, just playing outside)
for the sports fest the next week.The same
thing happened this week.The actual
sports fest is only two days, but the school allows them to practice during
class for the event.No wonder these
kids can’t read.They have this ruckus
in the background and can’t concentrate.

On Wednesday our team had a practice game against St Joseph, which my team lost to. We're lucky we didn't play them for real; that team was really good. The opposing
team’s coach said something great to me before the game and said that was that the school I am
at is lucky to have me.I said thank you
very much in the local language.That
was great to hear.I know my school
feels the same.

Yesterday, we played for real and won by 15 against another team. I am ending this blog early because I just got the notice my computer is running out of battery now. I'll write again whenever I can. On Monday I start teaching for real, wish me luck. Ingat na. (Take Care.)